The Nine-Tailed Fox Lady Story
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The Imperial palace was perfectly silent when the lanterns suddenly died. A cold wind, smelling of wild musk and scorched earth, swept through the corridors. In the absolute darkness, the emperor gasped for air, his chest tightening as if crushed by invisible claws. Then, from the corner of the room, two golden eyes opened, glowing with a terrible, ancient intelligence. The woman he loved was no longer there.
It was the height of autumn in the capital. The leaves of the maple trees had turned the color of spilled blood, and the Imperial court was consumed by music and poetry. Among the many attendants, one woman stood out entirely. Her name was Tamamo-no-Mae. She had arrived out of nowhere, possessing a beauty that made the moon itself seem dull. When she played her lute, the birds would stop flying to listen. Emperor Toba was utterly captivated. He refused to attend to matters of state, spending all his waking hours by her side. He showered her with silk and gold, blind to the whispers of the older courtiers who noticed that the flowers in her garden withered slightly whenever she walked past them. The air around her was always a fraction too warm, and sometimes, a strange, multi-layered shadow trailed behind her on the tatami mats.
By winter, the vibrant Emperor had become a pale, trembling shadow of his former self. A mysterious illness gripped him, draining his life force day by day. The greatest physicians in the land were baffled. No medicine could cool his fever; no prayer could steady his heart. He could barely lift his head, yet he refused to let anyone but Tamamo-no-Mae tend to him. She sat by his bedside, her beautiful face a mask of sorrow, wiping his brow with a damp cloth. But the guards stationed outside the room began to experience terrifying nightmares. They dreamed of a vast, golden beast tearing the palace apart with teeth like swords. More disturbingly, stray dogs around the palace grounds were found dead, entirely drained of their blood. The head astrologer, Abe no Yasunari, knew the signs of a great demonic presence. The empire was not just losing a ruler; it was being actively consumed.
Desperate, Yasunari prepared a high-ranking Shinto ritual. He invited Tamamo-no-Mae to an altar adorned with sacred paper streamers, claiming it was a prayer for the Emperor's health. She stepped forward gracefully, but the moment she approached the altar, the candles flared violently. Yasunari thrust forward the sacred Yata mirror, pointing it directly at her face. The reflection was not of a beautiful woman, but of a monstrous fox with fur of burning gold and eyes of purest malice. With an ear-splitting shriek that shattered the wooden pillars, Tamamo-no-Mae's human disguise dissolved. Her robes tore apart as nine massive, blazing tails erupted from her back, crashing against the ceiling. The air ignited. The golden fox lunged at Yasunari, but the sacred wards held, burning her paws. Realizing her cover was blown, she smashed through the palace roof, soaring into the night sky like a comet made of hellfire, leaving the Emperor to wake from his trance, horrified by the monster he had loved.
Hunted by thousands of soldiers to the plains of Nasuno, the beast was finally struck down by blessed arrows. Yet, the earth refused to accept her body. Where she fell, a massive, jagged rock thrust violently upward from the soil. This was the Sessho-seki, the Killing Stone. Instantly, a yellow, suffocating mist began to seep from its cracks. A bird flew too close to the stone, twitched once, and dropped dead from the sky. To this day, the wind around Nasuno sometimes carries a faint, sickening sweet perfume mixed with the smell of sulfur. If you walk the plains alone and hear the beautiful pluck of a lute carried on the breeze, will you have the strength to turn away, or will the golden fox claim one more victim?